The University of North Carolina School of Medicine study consisted of two groups of mice — one that had been drinking very heavily and one that silently judged the drinkers and hoped they would die in a car crash. Each were exposed to a certain sound, accompanied by electrical shocks.

After a while, the scientists backed off on the shocks, merely playing the sound that the mice had come to associate with the wrath of God or, at the very least, Emperor Palpatine. The non-drinking mice recovered quickly, no longer fearing the sound. Meanwhile, the boozing mice still feared the sound and froze every time it played.

Valerie Curtis, a researcher at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, argues that disgust evolved for the much same reasons that fear did. Disgust keeps us away from threats that can’t be seen, in the same simplified way that fear can keep us alive. Curtis tells us that the theory that the capacity for disgust was at the foundations of our modern conception of morality:

“If I go around leaving poo in your front lawn or spitting in your cups or making nasty smells in public transport or if I go to church in my pajamas, I’m threatening you with my bodily fluids. These are manners, but they’re also the precursor of moral behavior. That’s at least one of the ways that morality could have evolved in society: simple rules about not getting other people sick with your emanations. If you sit people in a room with bad smells, they punish more severely. Your sense of disgust for people’s bad behavior is tied together with your organic system.”

So, what can we take away from this research? A scientist saying “poo” is hilarious.

Apparently a lot of people are worried about the cleanliness of public toilets, some even worried about sitting on the seat. They’re even rating dumpsheds online like they’re pissing in college professors. (That’s another web site.)

This is just a friendly SG Reminder: what do you think you’re leaving in there? Bathrooms are tile enclosures for depositing human waste. Your poo-poo. Your pee-pee.

You know why bathrooms are disgusting? Because you use them. And us. But we’re a different story.

So, next time you’re in a public toilet, how about just getting the job done? Believe us, the rest of the bar more than makes up for that place where you crap in a chair.